Skepticism

EVENTS

The twisted logic has ruptured my brain!

Mississippi has a law that allows stores to discriminate against gay customers, so some of the more enlightened businesses that would rather sell their stuff to anyone willing to pay for it are putting up stickers in their windows to let everyone know that they have no objection to gay people.

AFA spokesman Buddy Smith said: “If you do that, you are agreeing with these businesses that Christians no longer have the freedom to live out the dictates of their Christian faith and conscience.

“It’s not really a buying campaign, but it’s a bully campaign, and it’s being carried out by radical homosexual activists who intend to trample the freedom of Christians to live according to the dictates of scripture.

“They don’t want to hear that homosexuality is sinful behaviour – and they wish to silence Christians and the church who dare to believe this truth.

I don’t even…so personally following your own moral dictates that say you should not oppress others for their sexual preferences tramples the freedom of Christians? OK. Then I shall trample Christian morality wherever I go.

We cannot bully because we love you and feel no joy that you choose hellfire, your flesh being melted from your bones and so forth. We love you but we must resist your hateful, hidden agenda to defeat real freedom in the blood of Christ. He died for our sins, for each of you bloggers before you were conceived! And before the big fucking bang and the invention of glasses for Hubble. You sinners cannot fool us. You want to hang Christ on the Cross all over again with your evil signage. Your sign should say, If you are buying, then the devil is selling! Some things are so obvious.

No one is oppressing their right to oppress. The state lege just passed a law supporting their right to oppress. They’re being oppressed by the existence of people choosing not join in on their oppressing. I’m not impressed by their logic.

@5: It’s worse than that. These stickers aren’t calling for a repeal of the “bigotry is allowed” law — they’re just saying that this store chooses not to avail themselves of their God-given right to be bigots. That the bigots take this as bullying of *them*…….defies all attempts at explanation, however desperate.

@johnmckay 10. I have to oppressively object to your right to opine regarding oppression. You feel you have right to avoid oppression by oppressing our holy ordination, our saving grace and birthright and yet it is you and yours who prevent the free dissemination of the truth by opining and by complaining and refusing the great relief of belief. You perhaps suggest that resistance in joining maintains a sort of freedom. You are oppressed by your freedom! Just let go…. For only 12.95 U.S. I can send you real truth and the story of the coming judgement. For 24.95 U.S. I will forward the plan of the universe as God wrote it at the beginning of time, just past 2000 years ago according to biblical science. Yes, it’s true! There is a hundred dollar dollar revelation series available but not for you, only for the properly churched among us, those who have already demonstrated their faith by committing at lesser levels. May God have mercy on your soul and free your funds for Jeeeeeezusss!

We don’t discriminate
But we can’t sell you anything because your gay
Sorry but you offend our pristine stone age morality
It is a mortal sin
Your very existence tramples on our freedom
Repent and get the governor’s seal of approval that you’ve got the gay removed
And then if you buy we will sell
See how genuinely fair minded and decent we are

You’ve got to be impressed with the bigots. The equivalent to “I would even let one of them homosexuals use my bathroom” (or, more directly, “I support the existence of gay people insofar as I am getting money from them”) is a stunning endorsement of gays and thus an affront to everything they believe? They are really exposing the extent of their hatred every time they open their fucking yaps.

Well, yes, Great American Satan @13. It isn’t a shopkeeper’s job to recognise their customers’ humanity. It’s a shopkeeper’s job to sell. It isn’t a customer’s purpose to recognise a shopkeeper’s humanity. It’s their purpose to buy whatever they want.
Simply by recognising that moral judgments don’t come into it they implicitly accept one another’s humanity.

Usually they’re so very happy to boycott businesses that sell or otherwise cater to the wrong people. Now apparently having to boycott these businesses violates “the freedom to live out the dictates of their Christian faith and conscience”? It sort of reminds me of how they always howl in outrage when some leftist group decides to boycott someone. Apparently their whole lives and identity revolve around not their religion per se, but their consuming habits and the circulation of money. How very sad.

It’s the free market, Mr. Smith. It’s America, the land of the free, and the oh so famous American free market. If you think the free market wants to only buy from bigots, you’re getting your chance to test that belief.

In this post, I addressed two of the comments above: #12 and #13. I included links to the posts and the comments but did not use the names. I hope this is ok; if not, please let me know and I’ll change it.

I hope it is encouraging somewhat. I share your frustration with our state.

They are being socially bullied to not “live out the dictates of their Christian faith and conscience.” Because that part of their Christian faith is an unconstitutional monstrosity from the fucking bronze age that modern morality wholly rejects.

They’re also not allowed to stone women to death for sleeping around, murder their children for talking back, force child rape victims to marry their rapists, allow people to buy and sell other human beings, auction their daughters off for marriage, pay proper tribute in ancient coins to the Roman Empire, or all sorts of other Christian dictates about property, marriage, age of consent, rule by divine authority, crime, justice.

They would insist, of course, that it’s perfectly sensible to ignore 98% of the bible to suit modern times, and also not ignore a couple poorly translated lines in Leviticus, because they are personally homophobic bigots and are just hiding behind their religion.

Taking the Lord’s name in vain, one might say. That used to be a death penalty too.

“It’s not really a buying campaign, but it’s a bully campaign, and it’s being carried out by radical homosexual activists who intend to trample the freedom of Christians to live according to the dictates of scripture.

(my bolding)
I wonder if Mr. Buddy Smith would be willing to list all the dictates of scripture they’re supposed to follow. Then I wonder if he’d be willing to say which ones he follows.

They are being socially bullied to not “live out the dictates of their Christian faith and conscience.”

While I like the rest of your comment, I have to disagree with you here. The businesses displaying the stickers lack the power (social or political) to bully the homophobes. Remember, the pro-discrimination law was put into effect *because* of the social and political power possessed by the homophobes.

Bullying is the use of force, threat, or coercion to abuse, intimidate, or aggressively impose domination over others. The behavior is often repeated and habitual. One essential prerequisite is the perception, by the bully or by others, of an imbalance of social or physical power. Behaviors used to assert such domination can include verbal harassment or threat, physical assault or coercion, and such acts may be directed repeatedly towards particular targets. Justifications and rationalizations for such behavior sometimes include differences of class, race, religion, gender, sexuality, appearance, behavior, body language, personality, reputation, lineage, strength, size or ability. If bullying is done by a group, it is called mobbing

The sign could have been better written but I don’t think it merits some of the hate posted here. They’re just trying to say you are welcome to get what you want from this store rather than have to guess and/or risk being humiliated by being tossed out or otherwise rejected. They’re trying to earn the money the socially challenged dimwits are leaving on the table.

Meanwhile, christians live in such a tiny bubble that they cannot comprehend anyone living life differently. They honestly think 99.99999% of the population agrees with their worldview, so yeah, something like this comes across as a poke in the eye to them. They have no sense of proportion. That’s why they’re so damn retarded.

Sorry, it’s 3am, being really tired I forgot to include this thought in my previous post.

Unintended consequences. Talk about bullying, how will christians feel when this law is used against them. Probably the second reason this law should never exist (the first being decency). I’m sure the sponsors and backers can’t imagine how it could possibly backfire, but human nature says someone will troll it. Get your popcorn ready.

The death throes of an organism is ugly and pathetic. I think all the hate we see is driven by that.

If this is what they consider bullying, i’d be really happy to bully the living shit out of them. I wouldn’t actually bully them in the real, sane sense, though, because unlike them i’m a decent human being.
Fucking arseholes…i hope a pair of lesbian seagulls shits in their mouths while they are staring up into the sky praying to their ridiculous, made up, celestial psycho.

As Eirik so ably said, there is no bullying, only showing twits for what they are. They certainly don’t like it when their “dictates of Christian faith and conscience” are shown to be quite silly, ignorant and not held by everyone, the fantasy of every TrueChristian. Indeed, it shows that these “dictates” are nothing more than something that they made up since other Christians don’t agree with them at all.

The sign could have been better written but I don’t think it merits some of the hate posted here

I don’t think anybody here was particularly exercised about the sign, The Count – maybe it was your 3am reading that did it, but as far as I can see everyone here is pissed off with the people behind the bigoted legislation that made the sign relevant, not with the people who put the sign up.
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As for the Patriarchy twizzlers who have the gall to complain that this sign is bullying them , well, they’re a right bunch of nasty putrescent little pustules and no mistake. Not to mention that they’ve destroyed whole lorry-loads of irony meters. They’re being bullied – by a few people simply saying out loud that no thank you, they won’t be availing themselves of the legal permission to bully an actual oppressed minority. Takes my breath away.

#40 Erik van der Meer.
I think you’ve hit the nail on the head here. Holding bullies up to ridicule really annoys them, and that’s why this guy is so infuriated.
Quite how this sticker curtails anybody’s freedom is beyond me…

I thought these right-wingers were all about two things: forcing their views on others, and the free market. So here’s something that plays one off the other and they’re actually afraid the free market will win.

Thanks plainenglish, but I was searching through my boxes of books the other day and found two different copies of your God’s holy book. No need for you to send them to me. I spent a long time believing in the words in those books before realizing there was absolutely no support for them other than my parents’ belief.

It’s not because we’ve never heard “The Good News” that we reject your God.

To those who hate the sign I would answer that it probably takes some courage and conviction to post that in the kind of environment that would vote pro-discrimination laws. If only from the risk of losing customers among the bigots.

Of course no state is perfectly homogenous in bigotry so maybe in the more urban parts of the Mississippi there is no problem.

Next step. They will seek out gay owned businesses and scrawl FAGS OUT in large pink letters across the shop windows. Mississippi can then have its own Crystal Night. All legal and supported by the state.

Indeed. ‘Tis a perfect example of Poe’s Law. However, I’ve been posting and reading here for 8 or 9 years and it has gotten progressively easier to discern real extremism from parodies of extremism. The parodies that fool me occasionally are the ones that are not insanely over-the-top.

As far as the topic at hand, the persecution complex of the Christian fundamentalists in the USA knows no equal. They don’t seem to understand that you cannot be persecuted by someone with less power than you. Real bullying is effective precisely because bullies target those who they perceive are weak and unable to fight back. When bullying fails because the target refuses to be intimidated and is joined in solidarity by large numbers of compassionate people (which seems to be the case here), the bullies show their true colours. Their actions are precipitated by fear and hatred of those unlike themselves, and they are quick to try and portray themselves as the victims when they receive any push-back because they were not only unsuccessful in hurting those they hate, but forced to endure the criticisms of people they assumed were allies.

This is precisely why silence in the face of injustice is almost as harmful as siding with the perpetrators of said injustice. Bullies need to feel powerful, well-liked, supported by a majority of their peers. They need to be popular. And unless people they see as their equals (white, heterosexual men mostly, but also people of Christian faith who have no problem with homosexuality) speak out in harsh criticism of bullies’ actions, they assume they are allies. Confronting these bigots with the reality that those they used to be able to count on for support are now actively critical of their position, that they are progressively becoming more and more marginalised, amplifies the fear and hatred to the point where they show everyone else just how cowardly they are and become the target of ridicule as they try to convince everyone that it is their beliefs that are being persecuted against.

The popular notion that God must be revered and worshipped sets in motion a foundational disregard for humanity, a breeding ground for the notion of persecution, the Cross. It starts with a ‘choice’ to be saved but being saved means being lost. Soon, you can join others of like babble-mind in churches busy at judging and oppressing others with your one immutable TRUTH while being preached into believing that they are loving others and that they themselves (so respectfully ‘mounted’ in pews) are the ones being oppressed. This phenomenon is not only found in religion. Malcolm X pointed it out in American media too: “If you’re not careful, the newspapers will have you hating the people who are being oppressed, and loving the people who are doing the oppressing.”

I understand that some Christians (e.g. the Hobby Lobby people) like to close their retail establishments on Sunday to observe the sabbath. Therefore if you post a sign that indicates that you’re open on Sunday, that’s bullying too.

Probably best not to call them that. Not only is it unfair to those with mental disabilities, but these people misbehaving in this way have chosen to live their life like this, unlike those who are born with a disability.

@29: Apparently their whole lives and identity revolve around not their religion per se, but their consuming habits and the circulation of money.

Well, yes: just look at the conniptions these people throw every year over being wished “Season’s Greetings” by the Walmart greeter. It just ruins the whole annual-orgy-of-consumerism spirit, doesn’t it?

It occurred to me just now that this is the same part of the world where, within living memory, businesses could get boycotted or worse for selling to or hiring blacks, or failing to maintain proper segregation on the premises. It was Just Not Done. That’s the context to keep in mind when thinking about this right-to-bigotry law, and this sticker, and the reaction thereto.

radical homosexual activists who intend to trample the freedom of Christians to live according to the dictates of scripture.

Except that scripture probably doesn’t dictate anything regarding homosexuality. Certainly not from any god, and probably not even by the goatherders who collected the texts.
Neither the Leviticus passages nor the Sodom and Gomorrah story refer to ghey secks, but are rather prohibitions from the [ Holiness Code ], which had to do with not doing things the Canaanites do, us vs them.

Rorschach, my brain is already ruptured by the twisted logic of Buddy Smith. For the love of god, no more!? I have no patience with these ‘the Bible doesn’t say what it says when it says what it’s saying. It’s all contextual’ arguments.

The passage or rather one of them reads:

18 The Lord said to Moses, 2 “Speak to the Israelites and say to them: ‘I am the Lord your God. 3 You must not do as they do in Egypt, where you used to live, and you must not do as they do in the land of Canaan, where I am bringing you. Do not follow their practices. 4 You must obey my laws and be careful to follow my decrees. I am the Lord your God. 5 Keep my decrees and laws, for the person who obeys them will live by them. I am the Lord. 6 No one is to……..

………….[ Lots and lots of assorted sexual naughties, and then]:

18:22 ‘Do not have sexual relations with a man as one does with a woman; that is detestable.
23 ‘Do not have sexual relations with an animal and defile yourself with it. A woman must not present herself to an animal to have sexual relations with it; that is a perversion.
24 “‘Do not defile yourselves in any of these ways, because this is how the nations that I am going to drive out before you became defiled. 25 Even the land was defiled; so I punished it for its sin, and the land vomited out its inhabitants. 26 But you must keep my decrees and my laws. The native-born and the foreigners residing among you must not do any of these detestable things, 27 for all these things were done by the people who lived in the land before you, and the land became defiled. 28 And if you defile the land, it will vomit you out as it vomited out the nations that were before you.
29 “‘Everyone who does any of these detestable things—such persons must be cut off from their people. 30 Keep my requirements and do not follow any of the detestable customs that were practiced before you came and do not defile yourselves with them. I am the Lord your God.’”

So there you go, detestable, perversion, defile, vomit,sin, even the land was defiled. This passage may be the origin of the theory that gay sex cause earthquakes. Or was it tits that did that? Anyway: how could god or goat-herder put it any more starkly for you?? It’s perfectly valid to suggest that the reason that some sexual acts are outlawed in the Bible is to help to create a Hebrew social identity — that’s what stupid cultural laws are for after all. ( No I’m not into bestiality. I deny everything. ) But how could you possibly claim sensibly that the anti-gay sex law is not about gay sex? Certainly all this stuff is black propaganda, a chilling justification for the genocide of the Canaanites. But the argument that therefore, it “probably doesn’t dictate anything regarding homosexuality” isn’t just an utter non-sequiter; it makes no sense at all. It’s not coherent to condemn the Canaanites for committing certain sexual acts, without condemning these same sexual acts. If it’s possible, can you show me how? According to Leviticus, gay sex is an abomination. And that is that.

And the rest of this myth is more likely due to dodgy translations, eg of “arsenokoitai (ἀρσενοκοῖται)”, rather than divine instructions.

This of course is a different argument, but, you know, could you be a bit more specific?? ( ‘arsenokoitai'; is that a pun?) But the ‘rest of this myth’ bit seems spurious to me, sorry. The alleged myth of which you speak is that the Bible forbids gay sex. You’re wrong. It does. What other ‘rest’ is there to this ‘myth’?

I can only guess that this sort of thing remains popular because gay etc people and those who support them are in a sticky situation if they want to say to religious bigots: “Look at what this ridiculous screed really says you clowns! It says you should kill people for gathering sticks on a Sabbath! For adultery! For disobeying their Father and their Mother! For having gay sex…..oh dear.” If you try to have a sensible discussion about scripture on this particular issue, you can’t help highlighting this nasty little detail. And one thing we don’t need is peoples’ attention being drawn to a Biblical ‘justification’ ( ahem ) for violence against gay people.
So perhaps people are reduced to saying, as a retort to this ‘gay sex is forbidden by the Lord’ nonsense, to say: “Huh, you’re the one who doesn’t understand scripture.” But this is going nowhere. And in the long term, it is a fatal mistake to attempt to defend rationality by using rotten arguments.

This is precisely why silence in the face of injustice is almost as harmful as siding with the perpetrators of said injustice. Bullies need to feel powerful, well-liked, supported by a majority of their peers.

QFT. Somewhat OT, but this is exactly why it’s so important when men speak up against or even just don’t join in with dudebro talk and sexist “jokes”. It makes a huge difference to the assumed level of background support.

How dare they deprive us of our god-given right to be hateful and discriminatory! Bastards.

They’re not even doing that. The businesses posting these stickers are only saying that they don’t discriminate. They’re not preventing other businesses from discriminating, just declining to do so themselves. That’s what makes this extra ridiculous.

I will note, If they actually believed they were in the right, and truly a majority, they would have no problems with these signs.

The provide “Real Christians” like them with fair warning that the shop ownwers disagree with them, and thus may be boycotted, to avoid gay cooties or whatever.

The fact that they are throwing fits demonstrates that they know they are in the wrong, and understand that stores that display their intentions to sell to anyone will have an advantage in the marketplace.

You got it all wrong! The shop owners don’t put these stickers in their windows to sell to fags even though they don’t want to. No, no, no, fags are putting these stickers on innocent shop owner’s windows to make them sell to the fags and get the stores inundated with fags and their limp wrists and glitter and too much hair, etc. /snark

Seriously, though, are they complaining about “bullying” because they think the gheys are putting the stickers on stores without the owner’s permission; to bully them into selling to gays also, opposing their religiot beliefs that gays are evil? Is this just my old-fashioned use of the word “bully”? Or is it more subtle bullying? That the shop owners are doing it to look like they’re tolerant, like the little kid giving his lunch money to the big bad bully? If so, isn’t that an awesome thing? That the gheys now have enough power to bully the ghey-haters?
…

the freedom of Christians to live according to the dictates of scripture.

Isn’t that self-contradictory? Is anyone really free by just doing what a Dictator tells you to do? If “free will” is only the freedom to obey or dis-obey (and be tortured for disobedience), then I’ll have NONE of it.
And that’s why theists believe atheists just HATE the existing God. Projection: it’s just what they want to do whenever their brain starts functioning and lets them reason for even a moment.

2 May 2014 at 10:47 am (UTC -5) Seriously, though, are they complaining about “bullying” because they think the gheys are putting the stickers on stores without the owner’s permission?

You seem to be making a gallant & heroic attempt to see some trace of logic in all of this. It doesn’t appear to be there; as reported, the rhetoric really is just insane. To quote Buddy Smith according to the Pink Paper:

“If you do that, [ buy from stores that display these stickers I presume ] you are agreeing with these businesses that Christians no longer have the freedom to live out the dictates of their Christian faith and conscience.

“It’s not really a buying campaign, but it’s a bully campaign, and it’s being carried out by radical homosexual activists who intend to trample the freedom of Christians to live according to the dictates of scripture.

“They don’t want to hear that homosexuality is sinful behaviour – and they wish to silence Christians and the church who dare to believe this truth.”

re 65:
Oh, I see. They are saying the Stores (displaying these stickers) are bullying the Christian stores, by advertising that they are “gay-friendly” while those Xians are just homophobic-bigots. I’m just blinded by the rainbow, unable to see all that fineprint beneath the rainbow.

This may have been said already, but I would think the xian bigots would be in favor of this campaign. After all, it allows them to know which businesses to stay away from so they won’t catch the ghey cooties.

Of course, the downside may be that they begin to realize they aren’t quite the majority they think they are.

It violates their Freedom From Thought, one of the most important liberties in the theist’s life.

+ 1

They don’t merely want to bully: they want to force everyone else to bully as well.

Yes, and never before have I seen them state it so blatantly.

Mississippi can then have its own Crystal Night. All legal and supported by the state.

“In the night of the – date to be inserted – the People’s Wrath™ will spontaneously erupt…”
– from a movie

‘arsenokoitai’; is that a pun?

For literal fuck’s sake, no! :-) It’s Greek, and the oi is explicitly marked as a diphthong by the absence of the two dots the i would otherwise bear. There is no relation to the Latin compound noun coitus, where co- is “together” and -itus is from ire, “to go”.

Jim Phynn @ 45: That’s similar to what I thought when reading this. It is very telling when faced with the conflict in their belief system between hate and free markets, they side with hate. They even interpret a business competitor displaying one of these signs not on its face value as an attempt to increase sales, but as some twisted persecution of them. Religion is a powerful mindfuck.

In pursuit of reason and freedom, let it be known that any and all attempts to:
1) impede the establishment of a theocracy, or
2) speak in any manner that appears to oppose said theocracy
are fundamental violations of first amendment rights, specifically:
1) those regarding the establishment of state religion, and
2) those regarding free speech.

For literal fuck’s sake, no! :-) It’s Greek, and the oi is explicitly marked as a diphthong by the absence of the two dots the i would otherwise bear. There is no relation to the Latin compound noun coitus, where co- is “together” and -itus is from ire, “to go”.